But that’s what happened to Patrick in the Kobalt Tools 400 on Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where she struggled the entire race.

“It was a real tough day, no doubt,” Patrick said. “We know we’re going to have tough days, but this is not the kind of tough day we thought about. … We all are definitely a little somber and a lot disappointed.

“But nobody is throwing around words or yelling or screaming. That’s the attitude we need to have.”

The Stewart-Haas Racing rookie was 30th in the final practice Saturday but did not anticipate having such a difficult time Sunday.

Patrick said she felt like she was going to spin out by herself on the frontstretch while in traffic.

“We need to figure out how and why it changes so much from practice to the race and really learn this new car,” she said.

“I was extremely loose the whole time. We made it a little bit better, sort of, in the middle of the race to where it would go for about half the run. But by the end of every run, I found myself very, very loose again.”

Having made history just a few weeks ago at Daytona as the first woman to win a pole for any Cup race and with the highest finish (eighth) for a woman in Daytona 500 history, Patrick had a day to forget Sunday.

“We all earn our money on these days, not the days like Daytona where you run up in the top five all day,” Patrick said. “Those are great, but you’re marching forward.

“These are the days where you’ve got to be strong and you’ve got to work through it and you can’t let it drag you down.”

Her best finish in the Nationwide Series, where she ran partial schedules in 2010 and 2011 and then a full year in 2012, came at Las Vegas, where she finished fourth — the highest for a woman in the series — in 2011.

She had no illusions of finishing fourth Sunday, but she didn’t think 33rd would be her result.

With it being the first race at a 1.5-mile track this year, Patrick hopes that this isn’t an indicator of her performance for the several 1.5-mile races remaining this year.

“The only thing that worries me is that Vegas is a little bit more of a high-grip track, and so when the grip level goes down — given the fact that I felt like I had very little grip anyway out there — that concerns me a little bit,” Patrick said.

“But we’re only in our first mile-and-a-half race into the year with this new Gen-6 car, so there’s no reason to panic yet. But it is time to buckle down and really figure out how we are going to make this car better for the next mile-and-a-half.”

Patrick dropped from 22nd to 30th in the Cup standings.

“(Crew chief) Tony Gibson does a really nice job of reminding me to stay calm and take what the car will give me,” Patrick said. “I feel bad sitting in the car and not being able to go further forward.

“He feels bad because he can’t give me the car that I need to go further forward. We both are feeling for each other. … We’ve just got to figure out how to make it better, and we’ve just got to work our butts off to make sure that we never have this day again.”